


Hold on to Your Hate

by cyren2132



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Family, Gen, No Spoilers, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 04:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12381036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyren2132/pseuds/cyren2132
Summary: Nothing is right when Leia wakes up on a Millenium Falcon. But that ends up being the least of her worries.





	Hold on to Your Hate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambiguously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/gifts).



Leia woke at the tail end of a deep breath, the memories of a pleasant dream fading into the recesses of her mind. She rolled over, inhaled and froze.

  
The air was stale. The sounds, wrong. The bunk, a stiff, pillowed vinyl she hadn’t slept on in years. Slowly, she opened her eyes, confirming what her other senses had already told her.

She’d gone to bed in her quarters on D’Qar and woken up on the Millenium Falcon.

As her feet hit the floor, she realized she was fully clothed, right down to her boots. This wasn’t right.

Cautiously, Leia stood and opened the door, stepping into the main corridor with sense of trepidation that seemed all wrong for the ship that had saved her skin a dozen times over and brought her brother and husband into her life. And yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling.

“Rey?” she called out, the words echoing unanswered across the bulkhead. “Chewie?”

When she reached the cockpit, there was a small part of her that expected Han to be there, swiveling around in his chair with an impish grin and a “Good morning, your worshipfulness,” on his lips. But she knew that wasn’t possible. More than likely, she’d open the door to find Rey and Chewie at the helm, brows furrowed over navigational controls and star charts, only to look up with a smile at her arrival.

They’d grown close in the weeks since Han’s death. For as rough-around-the-edges as the one-time smuggler could be, there were certain types of people that sparked a devoted charm in him that could disarm even the most cynical of sorts. It surprised her not one whit that Rey and Han would have gravitated to one another — a daughter desperate for a father, and a father desperately seeking a second chance.

But none of that explained the current situation. Rey had left to find Luke. She had stayed on D’Qar. The last thing she remembered was crawling beneath the covers and propping up some pillows behind her to study a report on…something…before bed.

This wasn’t right. Steeling her nerves for whatever was in the cockpit, she pushed open the door and was met by cold emptiness and the streaking stars of hyperspace.

Beyond unsettled, Leia closed her eyes and forced herself to take several slow, deep breaths. Finally, soothed only slightly, she stepped out of the cockpit and pulled the door closed before continuing down the corridor. Her steps clanged on the secret compartments, and she stopped, stomping her foot once, listening for any indication that somebody was lurking beneath.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she whispered to herself and began moving again.

When she reached the lounge, her breath gasped and her heart skipped a beat. A man was there, hunched over the dejarik table. One thumb gently scraped across its surface.

“Luke,” Leia breathed as she went to him, took a seat at the table and dropped one hand on his. “Luke,” she said again, more firmly this time. He stirred slightly before turning his head to look at her, a haunted and hollow expression deep in his eyes.

“Leia?” His brow furrowed, his eyes squinted shut and he turned away. “How are you here?” he muttered to himself. “It’s not right…”

Leia reached a hand out, touched Luke’s face and turned it back toward her.

“Luke, look at me.”

His hand went lightly to her wrist as he leaned his cheek into her palm and breathed deeply before opening his eyes.

“You’re here,” he said.

“You didn’t feel my presence?”

Luke shook his head, almost impercetibly.

“I don’t feel anything.” He sniffed once and blinked slowly, shaking his head and tensing his muscles until another deep breath seemed to pull his world into focus. “It’s like the Force just isn’t here. How is that possible?”

Leia shook her head. If her brother, the last Jedi Master, couldn’t grasp all the complexities of the Force, then she surely couldn’t see into its inner workings and oddities. But she could see Luke’s parched, cracked lips almost hidden behind his beard and feel the dryness of his skin against hers.

“Let’s get you some water,” she said gently. “Then we can figure out what’s going on.”

Luke nodded and allowed himself to be guided to the locker of rations. It was only after he’d torn off the edge of a water packet and drank deeply that he spoke again.

“I’m sorry,” he said. She almost didn’t catch the slight shake in his voice.

“For what?”

“For everything. For Ben. For failing him. For not being there or with you when-” the words stuck in Luke’s throat, but his eyes traveled the walls of the room. The old fighter helmet hanging haphazardly on a hook. The pile of dirty rags crammed into an overhead container. Bibs and bobs from blasters and engine components.

Han was all around them. It didn’t matter how many hands she’d been in before or since, The Millenium Falcon would always be Han Solo’s ship.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Leia said quietly. “Do you know how we got here?” Luke shook his head.

“No. No,I don’t actually remember much of anything before…before you found me.”

“I went to the cockpit, but there was no one there.”

Luke nodded and Leia couldn’t help but feel a twinge of relief as her brother’s composure veered closer to the man she was familiar with.

“We should look again,” he said. “Check the navigation and comms. See if we can at least figure out where we’re going-”

“Or find someone to talk to,” Leia finished for him. He grinned at her and for just a moment Leia saw the boy she’d met in a Death Star so many years ago.

* * *

 

The cockpit offered about as many clues as it had occupants. Leia sat at the comms console and cycled through every frequency she knew for the New Republic, the Resistance — even an old Imperial code for a fringe group that maintained an uneasy alliance with the New Republic after the fall of the Empire. But all she got in return was static.

Luke’s luck wasn’t any better. The ship was on an autopilot they couldn’t remove. They couldn’t even pull up star charts to figure out where they were, and Luke’s attempt to crawl under the console and access the records box to at least see where they’d been didn’t net anything more than burned fingers and sparks.

“I just don’t understand,” Leia said as he emerged from a mass of wires and cables. “How does any of this make sense?”

“It doesn’t,” Luke said with a sigh as he collapsed in the co-pilot’s chair. “I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know how we got here.” Luke picked a piece of lint off his robes and bitterly tossed it at the equipment. “I don’t know why I can’t feel the Force.”

Leia reached across the aisle and grasped her brother’s hand.

“We’ll figure it out,” she answered. “Somehow.”

Luke nodded and was about to speak when a heavy pounding reverberated off the ship’s walls.

BANG!

“What the hell is that?”

BANG!

“I don’t know!”

BANG!

Luke and Leia took off at a run, following the sound through the small ship until they came to the main cargo hold. The door vibrated with every blow. Now that they were closer, they could hear a grunting yell that came with each hit, always on the same place in a slow, methodical meter. Until it wasn’t.

Luke had just grabbed a long iron rod that surely had some purpose once upon a time when the steady bangs became a frantic pounding and a man’s roar could be heard on the other side. Leia looked at Luke, and they each stepped to the side of the door. She nodded, and Luke held the rod tightly and pushed a button.

  
The door slid open and a man came tumbling out in a mass of long hair and dark fabric that tripped him up when there was nothing but air to catch his fury. He fell to the ground with a roar.

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!” he yelled. “I DEMAND ANSWERS!” If they hadn’t recognized his body, they surely recognized his voice.

“Ben,” Leia said with something akin to shock.

“Mother?”

“Ben.” Luke couldn’t keep the scowl off his face as his grip tightened around the rod.

“Uncle.” With a sneer, Ben rose to his feet. “You think you could finish me off with that, old man?”

“It wouldn’t be nearly what you deserved for everything you’ve done,” Luke answered. There was a coldness to his voice that Leia hadn’t heard before. And when they took steps toward each other, it was about all she could stand.

Leia forced herself between them, stiff-armed Ben back a few paces, and stepped backward, using her body to force Luke’s retreat.

“Stop it!” she yelled. “There’s no sense fighting amongst ourselves right now! What’s done is done, and we need to figure out what’s going on and how to get out of this situation!” Leia stared at Ben. Her eyes closed once under his glare, but she forced them open. Looking at him and all the pain he’d caused not just their family but the universe hurt. But somehow looking away hurt more.

“Why did you bring me here?!”

“We didn’t bring you here; we’re just as in the dark you are.”

Ben looked back and forth between them as anger slipped to confusion and finally a defiant smirk.

“I very much doubt that, Mother,” he said before dropping into a chair. “Why can’t I feel the Force?” Leia could feel Luke’s tension ease as backed off and took a seat as far away from her son as he could.

“I don’t know,” Luke said. “But I can’t either.”

“What’s the last thing either of you remember?” Leia asked.

Before either could answer, the ship was rocked by a heavy collision that sent them all running for the cockpit. Luke was the first one there.

“It’s an asteroid belt,” he said, glancing down at the controls. “Autopilot’s trying to compensate but there are too many of them.”

“Well go to manual!” Ben barked.

“We already tried that; we’re locked out!” Leia said as an asteroid glanced off the ship. She looked at the console. “The shield’s down 20 percent. We can’t take a lot of this.”

“I can try to bypass the system again,” Luke said, but the shake of his head and sound of his voice couldn’t mask the low likelihood of success. Another blow left them reeling, clutching to whatever they could just to stay upright.

“The laser cannons,” Ben said.

“We could take out some of them but they’re coming in too fast. We’d never keep them all from impacting. The shield would be toast long before we made it out of here.”

“We don’t have to stop them all from hitting, Uncle,” Ben said slowly. “We just have to clear a path the navicomputer recognizes. Autopilot will do the rest.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that could work,” Luke said, and they each headed for the gunnery. As he climbed up and Ben climbed down, Leia settled in at the controls, making sure she had a clear view of the field around them.

“Can you guys hear me?” Leia said into a small microphone.

“Loud and clear, Leia.”

“I hear you.”

Leia nodded and gave her first instruction.

* * *

 

She didn’t know how long they’d been at it, but it felt like hours as she tried to stay a step ahead of chaos, looking beyond the immediate asteroid, mapping the trajectory of others and telling Luke and Ben which rock was in the way of that future path. All this while also keeping her eyes peeled for the unavoidable projectiles. Luke and Ben were no slouches at the cannons, and they did their best to keep those at bay while she plotted, but Luke had been right. There were just too many for two pair of eyes to catch. Not when their focus had to snap to her other directions when the time came. But, with one final, gut twisting, sidewise pass between two rocks on a collision course, they were in the clear, with nothing but unfamiliar stars before them as the ship righted itself and continued on its way.

In the old days, there might have been whoops and hollers from the gunneries and grinning shoulder pats in the cockpit. Maybe even a hug. But those days were long gone, and Leia wiped her brow and walked back to the lounge alone.

Luke joined her a moment later, dropping into a chair with a silver package of rations.

“Where’s Ben?” Leia asked as he tore the top off a bag of cooking water. As soon as the air touched the inside, the water began a slow simmer.

“Still in the lower gunnery.” The water reached a boil and he carefully poured it into the second pouch, mixing the ingredients before spooning a pile of noodles onto a plate and sliding it to Leia. “Sulking.”

“Don’t you mean _reflecting_ ,” Leia said with something that was almost a smile at the way Ben would try use his jedi training to hide a sour mood as a child. Luke snorted and stabbed at his food with a fork.

“Apparently we didn’t praise him enough for his genius idea,” he said bitterly.

“Luke, don’t be like that.”

“Don’t be like that?” Luke dropped his fork with a clatter. “Don’t be like that? Leia, he killed ALL of my students.”

“I know-”

“And not just the adults. He killed the children-” Luke’s voice broke at the memory of returning to find his academy in bloody ruins and he stared down at his plate, trying to regain an ounce of composure. “He killed Han. He killed his own father. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Yes.” Leia answered. “Yes, of course it does. I hate what he did, but he’s still my son. He’s my child, Luke, you can’t understand that.”

“Can’t I? Leia, you don’t know what it was like walking into that temple-”

Luke’s words were cut off by a yell from down below.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” Ben yelled as he stormed into the lounge. “YOU did this,” he spat at Leia, jabbing a finger in her direction.

“Did what?”

“Or was it YOU?” Ben turned his ire toward Luke. “Is this one of your Jedi tricks?!”

Luke and Leia rose to their feet.

“Ben, we don’t know what you’re talking about!”

He sneered at them and grabbed a wrench for a nearby worktable.

“We’ll see about that.” He stalked down the ship’s corridor and Luke and Leia had no choice but to follow as he entered the cockpit. He reared back and swung at the transparisteel, but the wrench bounced off it like nothing. He tried again and again until he could hear his mother’s voice yelling in his ear

“What the hell are you doing?! Are you trying to get us all killed?!”

Ben let loose a roar and swung once more at the barrier between them and outer space, only this time when the blow landed. Stars turned to static on the window Ben had hit. A black horizontal line raced from bottom to top as Luke reached out and placed his hand on the cracks Ben had left behind. A monitor.

Ben watched him before turning back to Leia.

“What did you do?” he said. Darkness dripped in his words as he took a step toward her.

“I didn’t do anything.” Leia stepped back as he advanced, swearing her innocence as he scowled. They were in the lounge when he caught her, grabbed her by the shoulders and held tight. “I didn’t do anything!”

“I don’t believe you.” His grip tightened before moving to her neck. She grabbed his forearms, kicking wildly and had just come to realize that this was probably how she was going to die when a mechanical hand land firmly on Ben’s shoulder. Ben dropped her as Luke pulled him back, tossing him across the room into a wall of shelves that fell to the floor with him.

Leia had spent years watching Luke master his latest prosthetic. It went past his elbow now, after flesh and muscle were eaten away from complications with his original — an unknown side effect of what had been cutting-edge technology a long time ago. The new one was safer and stronger, and it had taken time for Luke to learn to compensate in his quest to be as close to normal as a Jedi master could be.

 But he wasn’t holding back, now.

The same hand that had pulled Ben off of her now raised him up by the throat and held him a few inches off the ground, pressed hard into a wall.

“You don’t touch her,” Luke growled. Ben gasped for air.

“Luke, don’t,” Leia said, but her voice was just a quiet, raspy whisper. “Luke….”

She watched with a horror that didn’t lessen as Ben reached both hands up and brought them back down in a chopping motion on either side of Luke’s neck. Luke dropped Ben and stumbled backward, dropping to a knee. Ben aimed a kick for his head, but Luke dodged, spinning himself around and rising to his feet in one fluid motion. The brawl was unlike anything Leia had seen from either of them.

Ben was younger, but Luke had decades more experience as they threw punch after punch at each other — some landing, some missing, some blocked and used against whomever had thrown it. They kicked and grappled and threw each other into walls and over tables until all Leia could do was shimmy out of the way, her desperate pleas unheard as tools clattered to the ground and panels fell from the walls revealing a foreign background that just wasn’t right.

Everything was wrong.

Her back hit a wall. She was in a small alcove with long tubes hanging down around her. Re-breathers. The last time she remembered them being used, they were hiding from the Empire in the belly of a beast on an asteroid. Everything was moist and squishy and a rumbling movement sent her toppling into Han’s arms.

Leia squeezed her eyes shut. A calm washed over her as she focused on the memory. The strength of his arms. The smell of his shirt. The warmth of his skin.  
A loud crash shattered the illusion. She opened her eyes to see two of the three most important men of her adult life still locked in brutal battle. As she pulled herself to her feet, the calm she had felt moments before turned to anger.

Ben — Kylo Ren, as the rest of the universe knew him now — was just as responsible as she or Han had been in the failing of their family. If he hadn’t embraced the dark side, they’d still be together. Han would still be alive. But Ben killed him. In cold blood. While tricking him into thinking they could be a family again. And Luke. Luke must have sensed her pain, but did he come back? Not really. Her own brother wasn’t there for her in the early days of mourning, but it shouldn’t have been a surprise. He hadn’t been there in years, choosing instead to run away just as Leia’s whole world was beginning to crumble. In their own way, they’d both abandoned her, and now she had them back, and they had the audacity to tear each other apart?

“Stop it.”

Ben kneed Luke in the midsection and tossed him over a chair.

“Stop it!”

Luke recovered, and a diving tackle sent them both careening into the table she’d sat at only moments before. Their dinner fell to the floor and rivulets of water and brown sauce flowed in Leia’s direction. Absent other weaponry, each man grabbed a fork. When they lunged for each other again, she felt a cold fury spread across her bones.

“STOP IT!” She stepped forward and threw her arms wide and was just as surprised as they were when Luke went soaring into one wall and Ben into the opposite.

“Leia?” Luke tried to turn his head toward her, but he was immobilized. They both were, and for the first time, Leia had a real taste of the power they shared.

 

* * *

 

  
_“STOP IT!”_

Rey watched on the tiny monitor as Skywalker and Ren flew to opposite ends of the room. She was new to the Force, but the power emanating from a small section of the simulator was palpable even for her.

“I see we have some progress.” Snoke — or rather, the dots of light that made up Snoke’s hologram — approached, stopping next to her and gazing at the screen. “Interesting. I wondered who would find the amplified section first. This would have been a very short experience if it had been one of the others.” Snoke turned to a technician. “Decrease the Force dampeners by 30 percent — no, 20 percent,” he turned back to Rey. “We should try to keep a fair fight, after all.”

“I don’t understand your plan,” she said as Skywalker and Ren struggled to break free from Leia’s hold.

“I need a Skywalker,” Snoke answered. “But I’m not certain Kylo Ren is the right one.”

“So you’re locking all three of them in a room, turning them against each other and the last one standing becomes your new…servant? What makes you think think they wouldn’t turn against you for what you’ve done?”

“Anger isn’t the only path to darkness, darling,” Snoke said. Rey’s skin crawled at the endearment. “Grief, regret and shame can open just as many doors.” Snoke stared at her as she watched the monitor. “But I didn’t do this alone,” he continued. “Thank you for bringing them to me.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

Snoke nodded and raised his chin toward the door. Hux stepped fully into the room — Rey had no idea how long he’d been standing there — and strode to a terminal, where he punched a series of buttons.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” Snoke asked. “I need a Skywalker, but a woman of your talents…it’s a shame to let them go to waste.”

“No.”

“Very well,” Snoke said with a disappointed sigh. He twirled a finger in Hux’s direction, and Hux pulled a datapad from the terminal and approached her.

“Everything we have on your parents — from a last known location to several aliases is on this pad,” he said. “Good luck, Miss…”

“Rey.”

She took the pad and headed for the door. A crash from the tiny speakers made her turn back to the monitor. Ben lunged for Leia; Luke lunged for him; and Leia took on Luke.

Son against mother against brother against nephew. It was nothing short of a mess. Rey shook her head and turned away.

“I hope she wins,” she tossed over a shoulder as she stepped into the cold, empty hallway on the way to her ship and far, far away.


End file.
